Research highlights and news

January 2018 Plan-Nacional project GRANAS: A novel
platform for electronics and quantum electron optics based on
graphene nanostructures
(FIS2017-83780-P) applied for jointly with
Thomas Frederiksen (DIPC/Ikerbasque) has been approved by
MINECO.

We propose and analyze a solid-state platform based on surface acoustic waves (SAWs) for trapping, cooling and controlling (charged) particles, as well as the simulation of quantum many-body systems. We develop a general theoretical framework demonstrating the emergence of effective time-independent acoustic trapping potentials for particles in two- or one-dimensional structures. As our main example we discuss in detail the generation and applications of a stationary, but movable acoustic pseudo-lattice (AL) with lattice parameters that are reconfigurable in situ. We identify the relevant figures of merit, discuss potential experimental platforms for a faithful implementation of such an acoustic lattice, and provide estimates for typical system parameters. With a projected lattice spacing on the scale of ∼ 100nm, this approach allows for relatively large energy scales in the realization of fermionic Hubbard models, with the ultimate prospect of entering the low temperature, strong interaction regime. Experimental imperfections as well as read-out schemes are discussed.

New group member - In September
2017, Mikel Olano
joined our group at DIPC as a PhD student. He will work on quantum
information processing with electrons and phonons in semiconductor nanostructures.

We propose and analyze a high-fidelity hot gate for generic spin-resonator systems which allows for coherent spin-spin coupling, in the presence of a thermally populated resonator mode. Our scheme is nonperturbative in the spin-resonator coupling strength, applies to a broad class of physical systems, including, for example, spins coupled to circuit-QED and surface acoustic wave resonators as well as nanomechanical oscillators, and can be implemented readily with state-of-the-art experimental setups. We provide and numerically verify simple expressions for the fidelity of creating maximally entangled states under realistic conditions.

New group member - In April
2017, Maria Blanco de Paz
joined the project SOPhoQua (run jointly with Dario Bercioux,
Aitzol Garcia-Etxarri, and Juan José Saenz) as a PhD student.

November 2016 two new free/open journals on quantum physics
with interesting
publishing philosophy and refereeing model have been founded: the
arXiv-overlay journal Quantum
and the "peer-witnessed refereeing" journal
SciPost . Good luck to these endeavours!

We propose a scheme for deterministic generation and long-term stabilization of entanglement between two electronic spin qubits confined in spatially separated quantum dots. Our approach relies on an electronic quantum bus, consisting either of quantum Hall edge channels or surface acoustic waves, that can mediate long-range coupling between localized spins over distances of tens of micrometers. Since the entanglement is actively stabilized by dissipative dynamics, our scheme is inherently robust against noise and imperfections.

Plasmon-enhanced Raman scattering can push single-molecule vibrational spectroscopy beyond a regime addressable by classical electrodynamics. We employ a quantum electrodynamics (QED) description of the coherent interaction of plasmons and molecular vibrations that reveal the emergence of nonlinearities in the inelastic response of the system. For realistic situations, we predict the onset of phonon-stimulated Raman scattering and a counterintuitive dependence of the anti-Stokes emission on the frequency of excitation. We further show that this QED framework opens a venue to analyze the correlations of photons emitted from a plasmonic cavity.